Santana – Europa Guitar Lesson (Earth’s Cry Heaven’s Smile)
In this Europa guitar lesson video, I will demonstrate how to play this incredible Santana instrumental note-for-note.
As I mentioned in the video lesson, I will include the tone settings that I used in order to accomplish the long sustaining notes I am playing in the video lessons. Hopefully these settings will be a good starting point for your own tone settings for Europa. Download my tone settings below.
Europa Guitar Lesson Tone Settings PDF
For a lot of the opening section of the song, I roll my volume back a little bit to 6 or 7 to tone down the dynamics. Then when I go into the big soaring lead section, I roll the volume knob back to 10.
I will take you phrase-by-phrase through all of the solos and melodies Carlos Santana plays throughout "Europa". This song is a great study in creating dynamics within a song.
There are a few fast licks thrown in there, but across both of the lesson videos for "Europa", you will find that the most important technique is to let the notes sing. Even within very quite sections of the song, Carlos Santana phrases the notes with a very vocal quality about them. In fact, it is good to practice these parts by singing them first, then trying to emulate the sound of your singing on the guitar. That will make sure that the lines sound fluid and musical.
Good luck with this beautiful instrumental!
Carl...
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Santana - Europa Guitar Lesson Pt.1
Santana - Europa Guitar Lesson Pt.2
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Thanks so much, Carl! Finally more Santana. I hope that Samba Pati will be on your to do list some time. Thanks also for the tone settings. You Rock.
This is awesome. You play it perfect! I’ve been dying to learn more Santana, any more of his songs you’d want to put would be great, Samba pa ti like GEORG says would be phenomenal
Thanks Carl!
Hey any chance you could show the chords and rhythm to this song? Love this song and you do an outstanding job.
Fantastic video! Could you do, Samba pa ti?
Please add “Oye Como Va” to your Santana request list.
Merci!
Dear Sir! Wonderful. Thank you for this excellent explanation. But where are the hot humbuckers on this fender Strat? I use a tele Brent Mason. Think it could also work. Best wishes, Mike.